up to the
tent to help get something to eat. Let them put on anything. If the
cook doesn't get coffee ready in fifteen minutes let me know. All of
you have your men hook up their teams. They can do that while
breakfast is getting ready. And hurry!"

The men looked at him curiously, then at one another. Ben was the
first to move.

"Aye, aye, sir," he said, with a grin, lifting his hand from his hip
to his forelock, and dropping it to his hip again as he walked away.
The others followed.

"Hold on!" cried Conniston, suddenly, before they had gone ten paces.
"Do all of the men know about this?"

The men laughed. "They ain't blind," explained one of them.

"And do they know--does any one of you know--where he got the whisky?"

They shrugged their shoulders. Only the Lark answered.

"I know, pal," he said, slowly. "I seen it."

"All right. You wait a minute. I want to talk with you. You other
fellows get busy."

The little San-Franciscan dropped back and waited. Conniston came up
with him and demanded shortly:

"Tell me about it."

"It was last night, 'bo, about 'leven o'clock, I guess. It was sure
some dark, too, take it from me. I woke up thirsty as a water-front
bum, an' beat it for the water-barrel. Comin' back, I come past the
tent. Bat was in there figgerin' when I went to the wagon. When I come
back he was talkin' to another guy. I stops an' listens, just for fun,
you know. The other guy I hadn't never saw. An' he said as how Mr.
Crawford had sent him out to ask how everything was runnin'. Purty
soon he puts a bottle on the table an' says, 'Have one?' Bat says
'No,' but you could see with one eye shut an' in the dark o' the moon
as he wanted it worse 'n I'd wanted the water I walked clean over to
the barrel to git. The stranger has one, an' fills a glass an' shoves
it under Bat's nose. An' if any longshoreman I ever seen had saw the
way ol' Bat put that red-eye under his vest he'd 'a' died with
jealousy. I knowed as how there wouldn't be nothin' in it for me, so I
went an' got another drink of water an' hit the rag-pile. That what
you wanted to know, 'bo?"

"Who was the man?" Conniston insisted. "What did he look like?"

"That's dead easy. I'm sure the gumshoe when it comes to pipin' a man
off so's I got his photograph in my eye. He was a little cuss an'
dressed to kill, with gloves on, an' all that. He was skinny an' pale
an' weak-eyed-lookin'."

"That will do!" cut in Conniston, brusquely. "And no